Falling Cloudberries, a world of family recipes. By Tessa Kiros.

Falling Cloudberries, I just love the title.

Falling cloudberries, gravadlax and strawberry tops, my grandfather’s chips, cinnamon and orange blossom water, rice pudding, spare ribs and stroganoff, rose petals and jasmine in the summer, these are just some of Tessa Kiros’s food memories.

These memories are a taste of what’s to come if you get your hands on Falling Cloudberries.

This cookery book is nothing short of sumptuous. The writer, Tess Kiros, has a very exotic background which has influenced her enormously. She was born in London to a Finnish mother and a Greek-Cypriot father. The family moved South Africa when Tess was 4 years old, and at the age 18 she set off to travel the world. She really wanted to learn about new ways of living and eating. She ended up marrying an Italian and now lives in Tuscany. The book is made up of recipes which she says have stayed with her all her life.

Reading through them you can see why, they are mouth-watering but down to earth at the same time. She loves tradition and people gathering for events.

Let’s start with the sweet stuff, Jam and cream shortcake, summer pudding, moist chocolate cake, chocolate truffle tart with hot chocolate and crème caramel.

Some of her savoury dishes are heavily influenced by her Greek-Cypriot background, have a look at chicken with coriander and spinach rice, lentils rice and red onion salad, red pepper soup with olives lemon rind and yoghurt, this recipe book dishes up doable recipe after doable recipe.

I wanted to keep stopping to start cooking. That’s how inspired I was.

Tessa combines her love of South Africa, Greek and Italian food.

Her Finnish recipes are fascinating. What I love about his book is that by reading through  it I learnt loads of new things or the writer showed me different ways of seeing and doing  things with food.  

Her section on South Africa starts at page 220. All the old favourites are there, prego rolls, kamut bread, fried chicken, barbecued spare ribs, oxtail, milk tart, carrot cake,lemon ice cream, but I love her explanations and her recipes that give a new twist.

Do yourself a favour, buy this treat of a cook book for yourself or drop hints to any lurking present giver and then get reading and be inspired. I’m making the Berry Cheese Cake this weekend, one of her Finnish inspired deserts.

It’s not a surprise that this cookery book has won many awards.

Falling Cloudberries by Tessa Kiros.

Murdoch Books.

Picture from the cranberry jam recipe.

About R320 in all good bookshops.